I took the example "MySensors --> GatewayESP8266"
Just commented out the line #define MY_RADIO_NRF24 since I don't have any radio modules hooked up to the ESP, and flashed it to the ESP successfully. I can ping the IP and telnet to 5003 on the ESP. When I look at the serial monitor I can see it boot up and display this:

I have uploaded the two files:
D_Arduino1.json
D_Arduino1.xml
To the Vera under Apps --> Develop Apps --> Luup Files

I then click on "create device" under the Develop Apps section and enter D_Arduino1.xml in the "Upnp Device Filename" field and 192.168.0.20:5003 (the ip of my ESP) in the IP field and click Create Device.

I see the "MySensors Plugin" device show up under Devcies and it says "Connected to:" (nothing). If i click on the device and go into settings everything is blank:

Connected to:
Plugin Version:
Lib Version:

If i click on the "start" button I get a message right away "ERROR: Invalid Service". When I look at the luup logs on the Vera I see the following:

Have you verified that the ESP connects to your WiFi?
Can you ping it?

Ya, as I mentioned I can ping the ESP and telnet to 5003 on it, so i know its on the network and listening.

Please also try restarting Vera a few times.

I've restarted Luup multiple times. I haven't rebooted the entire controller yet. I can give that a shot.

Did you try connecting with some other controller software? I usually check how the GW is working by connecting it to the MYSController running on a windows computer.

I'll give this a try, though I'm convinced the issue is with the Vera plugin, not the GW since I don't even see the Vera attempt to connect to the GW when I'm monitoring the serial monitor on the ESP. Where I can see my connection in the serial monitor when I telnet to it.

I made some progress.... my issue was "dumb user" I needed to upload all the xml and json files, not just the two. So I have them loaded on the Vera now and I can connect to the gateway. So as I mentioned in the original post, my plan is to have the ESX8266 act as a gw and a sensor and not have any radio modules connected to it. So I went a head and loaded on code to read the DHT22 temp.humidity sensor that I have hooked up to it. I installed MYSController and connected it to the gw/sensor and I can see the data coming in: http://imgur.com/unSkSKK

However I can't seem to get a temperature or humidity device to show up in the Vera. From what I've ready I should just click on "start" in the Vera MySensors plugin to start the inclusion process and when it detects the sensor the device should be automatically added. But that doesn't seem to be working at all. In the Luup logs of the Vera I can see it receiving the data:

@djzang don't use delay() in your sketch please chang it to wait(). Your GW will not receive the presentation command when it is in "delay".

I switched delay() to wait() but I'm still seeing the same behavior. When i click on "start" the inclusion process it always returns 0 devices found. There must be something that I'm missing. It seems like the way I'm doing things is not what most are doing, but from what I've ready it should be possible. Since my GW IS the sensor I can't simply power cycle the sensor node to have the GW pick it up during inclusion. Is there something else I should be doing instead?

Hello djzang
I just built the serial gw using esp-8266 but can not find how to physically hook it to Vera Plus or Vera 3 , do you have step by step instruction as how to do that maybe with pictures and what setup you entered in to the serial port configuration?
Thanks

@mntlvr I'm not sure what kind of serial chip is on the ESP8266 but Vera can not detect all types of serial chips because there are no drivers installed. FTDI chips should be detected by Vera automatically and then you just need to set the correct serial port settings:

@mntlvr The Vera controllers have a list of supported serial devices. If you look at this page under USB Serial Devices, looking at the chipset column you will see that the FTDI and PL2303 chipsets are the only ones that Vera natively supports. For the 2303 chipsets, some say that they don't work, and others say that manual configuration is needed. Mine luckily just worked with no extra configuration. That list was last modified in 2013 though, so what is supported/works and what doesn't most likely has changed since then.

Okay thanks
Well I built a Ethernet board using 1.4.1 library and a W5100 Ethernet board and it worked right off so now I am as curious as heck to make the ESP 8266 work but I still think it has something to do with the newest library. I think I will start out with the Arduino IDE 1.6.4 or something like that and see if that makes a difference. Not very many on this site can help with the issue because they do not have Vera Controllers, so I have to figure this out and just keep trying